Where Was God When…?

Humans can and do die prematurely through no apparent fault of their own. It’s a common feature on the news. It’s reasonable to ask who’s responsible. There are various agencies that can be held accountable: God, Mother Nature and Mankind. Since God is allegedly the Top Banana, the buck stops with Him when it comes to a ‘please explain’ those premature deaths. So, here’s an analysis of possible explanations with God taking centre stage.

Either God exists or God does not exist. If the latter, God cannot be held accountable for anything good, bad or ugly. But, if God exists, and has those positive attributes given to Him, even by His own words in the Bible, then God has a lot to answer for when it comes to explaining why humans are allowed to die prematurely through no fault of their own. The basic charge is premeditated murder at worst, almighty godly negligence allowing death at best.

Let’s review some positive Godly attributes:

God is Loving – Jeremiah 32:18.

God is Merciful - Exodus 34:6; Psalm 103:8; Joel 2:13.

God has Compassion – Psalm 86:15; Psalm 145:8.

God is Forgiving – Daniel 9:9; Ephesians 4:32.

God is Kind – Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13.

God is Gracious – Exodus 34:6. Psalm 86:15; Psalm 116:5.

God is Righteous – Psalm 24:5; Psalm 116:5.

And there’s a lot more besides but you get the idea. God is the good guy. God is your friend. God looks after you. Pure bovine fertilizer! In fact the extreme Christian Right Wing, those televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, etc. all like to stress some other of God’s attributes, like being a jealous God, a vengeful God, a God quick to anger and a wrathful God – they like a God who hates and who kicks human butts, hard, and fatally. To them, any premature death to anyone by any cause is attributed to God, thank God, full stop. That also strikes me as pure bovine fertilizer. 

Humans die thanks to God before their time is due:

Why God’s rush to judgment? Since everyone is doomed to die anyway, there’s no apparent need for an immortal deity to rush their demise. To God, a billion years either way, either side of now, is of no consequence, so a human lifespan is just a piddle. If other words, since God will get His pound of flesh, or the devil his due in the fullness of time, there’s no need for any human not to be granted the right to live to die of natural causes – old age.

Innocents have been put in harms way through no fault of their own. Who’s responsible? Where does the buck stop? The buck ultimately stops with the chief cook and bottle washer – the Almighty. 

We have humans killed by deliberate Acts of God:

An Act of God usually implies wilful death and destruction, pain and suffering, inflicted on humanity by well, guess who, the Almighty Himself. That’s murder in the first degree. What else would you call Sodom and Gomorrah; the Egyptian tenth plague on the firstborn; the invasion of the Land of Canaan? Nor does it have to even be a mass murder scenario – even God smiting a single individual is premeditated murder. Fortunately, there have been no unnatural actual Acts of God (as opposed to natural Acts of Nature) in way, way over 2000 years plus, at least defined as a major destructive event that happened without benefit of a natural cause, or even a single death that can only be attributed to “God” and so listed on the death certificate. So in the Common Era, God is off the hook for premeditated murder, though God should still stand trial for atrocities committed in the Old Testament. 

We have humans killed by random Acts of Nature:

That’s wilful negligence since God, if there be a God, ultimately controls nature, God being all-powerful and all that. But first, if it appears to be a natural disaster (flood, drought, famine, hurricane/typhoon/cyclone, tornado, bushfire, volcano, earthquake, hail, epidemic, pandemic, asteroid/meteor impact, solar flares, blizzards, icebergs, lightning, tsunamis/tidal waves, etc.) then lets adopt the duck philosophy – if it looks, sounds, swims, flies, and otherwise behaves like a duck, it’s a duck, or in this case, it really is an Act of Nature and not something deliberately set in motion by Mother Nature’s boss, God, though that’s not set in any philosopher’s stone by any means.

Acts of Nature have an apparent natural cause, but of course that could mean that God is hiding behind an apparently natural causality curtain, but in reality forcing Mother Nature to do His bidding. But why would an all-powerful God hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts? - Back to the duck philosophy. So let’s just assume that God just sits on the sidelines (if He’s still in the neighbourhood, don’t forget He hasn’t been seen or heard from in over 2000 years) and lets Mother Nature strut her stuff – the nice balmy spring mornings; the multi terror-tornadoes that strike in that afternoon.  

Now what does He do from His heavenly sidelines? Well, He can do nothing and wash His hands of the unfolding events, whether it’s the twisters that form in Tornado Alley, a Hurricane Katrina moving towards New Orleans or an Asian tsunami about to strike. But God failing to take action is akin to the parents of a toddler who’s crawling across a road busy with traffic and failing to take action to prevent the inevitable tragedy. That’s wilful negligence. Or, God could manipulate apparently natural events to suit His purpose – create winners and losers.

In any natural disaster (Acts of Nature) there will tend to be ‘winners’ (survivors) and losers – the newly deceased. If God got down off His throne and intervened then presumably He wanted the ‘winners’ to live and the losers to die and made sure the natural dice were rigged to ensure that outcome. If so, then the ‘winners’ can “Thank God”, at least for the surviving part, though God should still get the Big Finger from true believers for allowing that Act of God under the guise of an Act of Nature to have transpired in the first place. Is the credit due God for saving some lives outweighed by the blame for the deaths and overall destruction God caused in the first place?

We have humans killed by Acts of Man at God’s direction.

That’s God being an accomplice to murder in the first degree, for example the Battle of Jericho. Of course today such a defence holds no legal water. If I murder someone, the jury is unlikely to be swayed as to my innocence if I suggest that God wanted and directed me to carry out that murder. So let’s let God off the hook for Acts of Man, even if humans were inspired by God setting a bad example, summed up by that old chestnut, “do as I say, not as I do”. God may say “Thou shalt not kill”, but God’s own track record matches anything Jack-the-Ripper accomplished by many, many orders of magnitude over and above Jack, the serial killer.

We have humans killed by Unintentional Acts of Man:

Friendly fire is one such term, ditto collateral damage. It’s quite apparent from reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on TV that human related accidents cause the death of other innocent humans. A driver has a heart attack, loses control of his vehicle which slams into another car killing the occupants. A hunter shoots at what he assumes is a deer only to discover it’s a fellow hunter he shot by accident. It’s not a difficult assignment to come up with dozens upon dozens of accidental death due to some human error or unintended scenario unfolding, like that cigarette butt tossed out the window which starts a bushfire which goes out of control and ultimately kills dozens. The issue arises; we know why Hercules or Superman can’t come to the rescue, but why doesn’t an all-powerful deity, believed by the multitudes to exist, come and save the day? Doesn’t the deity, say God, care for the innocents? Or perhaps the multitudes are mistaken and God has no more reality than Hercules or Superman. If the former, God doesn’t come out of the situation smelling like a rose, that’s for sure. If the latter, the multitudes need to engage their brain into forward gear and question their beliefs, rather than have it idling in neutral, ever unquestioning.

We have humans killed by Intentional Acts of Man:

Though God ultimately has control over the actions of humans; God could argue that because of man’s free will, He shouldn’t get involved or be held accountable, even though parents are morally accountable for the actions of their children, and aren’t we, allegedly, God’s children? That analogy aside, though God probably thought it was none of His business, should He have really turned a blind eye towards what was to unfold in August 1945 at Nagasaki and Hiroshima? And what about the innocents caught up in the events of 9/11? What about tens of thousands of similar, but less memorable happenings like intervening before Jack-the-Ripper ripped? Again, God probably said it’s none of my doing; I’m not going to get involved. But, would such an attitude jive with all of those loving, kindness, compassionate attributes so noted and logged in the Bible? 

We have humans killed by their own stupidity: The Darwin Award:

Many a human has ended his or her own life prematurely through sheer stupidity, forgetfulness, negligence, and similar concepts. There are a whole series of books on what’s titled the “Darwin Awards” – those who benefit humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool and thus not passing on their stupidity genes to the next generation. Some people are their own worst enemy, accidents waiting to happen. While we’ve probably all experienced an ‘oops’ moment, some ‘oops’ are fatal ‘oops’. Now the question is should God save you from your own stupidity? Whatever your answer, God’s clearly answered that philosophical issue in the negative since people do die prematurely because of their own stupidity. Humans have a far better track record saving or rescuing people from their own stupidity – in the nick of time – than any deity.

Conclusion:

By way of final explanations, either 1) God does not exist or has left the building for parts unknown; 2) God doesn’t give a damn which suggests He isn’t compassionate or merciful, etc.; 3) God plays favourites which also implies He’s not merciful, etc. to all equally. It’s also statistically improbable that only those who were the losers in every natural or human related disaster deserved, in God’s eyes, to burn, baby, burn, and every ‘winner’ was a saint in human skin. When it comes to allowing even dictating the premature deaths of God’s children, well, God’s a god-awful parent! And this is the God you want to snuggle up to in heaven? If God really doesn’t have these positive attributes (mercy, compassion, etc.) then it illustrates that the Bible is full of it, and I don’t have to elaborate or spell out what “it” is.

Religious Hatred: The Westboro Baptist Church: Part One

One tends to associate religious intolerance for other religions with bloodshed. The phrase ‘holy wars’ comes to the fore. However, the peace movement has come to religious hatred as well as in all other manner of protest movements. The most famous, or infamous, of the peaceful religious haters is probably the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). I’m sure many of the recipients of their hate would prefer the days of bloodshed so they could dish a bit something back in return.

All monotheistic religions – and there are many of them – all have as a core value that theirs is the one true religion that represents the one true God and that all other monotheistic religions are false religions and represent a false version of God. That alone immediately leads me to the conclusion that they all are just full of B.S. and that there is no such animal as the one true religion and the one true God. But that’s not my overriding theme here.

Rivalry  between various monotheistic faiths have of course given rise to much inter-religious hatred and stemming from that, much violence and bloodshed. Methinks the God of the Old Testament, a serious fan of blood and gore, would be Lord Almighty pleased!

Anyway, religious hatred come violence has spanned the range from all out warfare, to terrorism, to more localized conflicts. Across the generations, so it has been and so it is now and no doubt so it will be way into the future (if humans don’t breed themselves out of existence first). A definitive list of monotheistic religious conflicts is way too extensive to give here, but Northern Ireland, the Crusades; and 9/11 all come to the mind as examples.   

At least when the holy bombs explode and the holy bullets fly and the holy swords slash away, you know what you’re up against and can strike back accordingly or as best you can.

But there’s religious hatred and violence, and then there’s religious HATRED that replaces physical violence with psychological warfare. No holy bombs, bullets or swords. Violence is replaced with the picket line, the placards, the chants, the songs. This now becomes the new (and improved?) non-violent version of bombs, bullets and swords. But make no doubt, the religious hatred, or in some cases, to make it clear, the HATRED, remains – in spades. To the best of my knowledge organized religious hatred of the peaceful kind is uniquely American. I’d like to say only in America, but I’d probably be corrected quick-smart. Still, God’s own country is awash in religious hatred without a bomb, bullet or sword anywhere in sight.

And so you can express your religious hatreds and carry out those messages and shed not one drop of actual blood and thus stay inside the law since the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech as long as such speech causes no actual or potential physical harm to others. For example there's no incitement to cause a panic, or to induce a riot or stir up the masses and cause a lynching. Still, what it lacks in doing physical damage is more than made up for in psychological trauma that these picketers direct their “God hates” placards against.  

Now what do civilized people, Americans or otherwise, make of religious picketers that carry placards that have as a central message “God hates…” and variations on the theme. Here are some actual examples of messages written on picket placards: it’s a representative, but hardly exhaustive list:

“America is Doomed; Fag Flag [the Stars & Stripes]; Fag Lover Obama; Fag Soldier in Hell; Fag Troops; Fags Are Beasts; Fags Are Violent; Fags Are Worthy of Death; Fags Die, God Laughs; Fags Doom Nations; Fear God; God Blew Up the Troops; God Hates America; God Hates Divorce; God Hates Fags; God Hates India; God Hates Jews; God Hates Obama; God Hates You; God Is Angry Everyday; God Is Your Enemy; God Killed Your Cops; God Killed Your Sons; God Sent the Shooter [various lone gunman massacres] ; God: USA’s Terrorist; Pray for More Dead Soldiers; Prepare to Meet Thy God; Remember Lot’s Wife; Thank God for 9/11; Thank God for AIDS; Thank God for Dead Cops; Thank God for Dead Soldiers; Thank God for [Hurricane] Katrina; Thank God for IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]; The Siege Is Coming; The World is Doomed; USA = Fag Nation; Your Sons Are In Hell; You’re Going to Hell”.

Then there’s a picket chant: “1, 2, 3, 4, God Hates the Marine Corps”.

And their song title: “God Hates the World”.

Pretty disgusting wouldn’t you say? Well, all those and more are brought to you, if not in person, then via your TV or Internet screen, courtesy of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), with a home base in Topeka, Kansas, which must be insulting to real Baptists since the WBC has no actual affiliation with any official Baptist organization. They’re a rouge organization, and for all practical purposes, an extended family organization. Well the BBC in a documentary on the WBC called them “The Most Hated Family in America” (2007).

Ah, but what does the WBC picket and why? Well their usual target is funerals and the higher the celebrity profiles of the funeral (victim or attendees) the better. But the funeral has got to have some sort of connection with, in their twisted logic, sins against God. So as long as the funeral has something to which, in their convoluted form of ‘sins against God’ religious logic, they can claim that “God hates” that something back in return. If “God hates” that something, and since the WBC stands shoulder-to-shoulder with God, then the WBC hates that something too and by God are they going to let the world know it!

Funerals are of course especially emotionally-charged occasions; military (killed in action) funerals all the more-so, which of course ramps up the impact the WBC will have, so military (killed in action) funerals are just about Target Number One.

The WBC also pickets other churches, since those churches, obviously, advocates a false religion or theology or god and thus are evil in the sight of the WBC God; and thus the call to arms and person the picket line. As long as something has a connection to something the WBC perceives that their God is against; then the WBC stands ready to picket! Apparently God can’t defend Himself adequately enough against false religions and needs additional moral support!

I spotted in one of their numerous extremist videos the statement that if you took on the WBC, any challenge to them at all, well God would get you for that since a slap in the face to the WBC was a slap in the face to God Almighty. Okay, I’ll take up and swallow their bait. I’m not afraid of their (non-existent) Big Bad God.

To be continued…

Those Tall Tales of Biblical Disasters: Part Two

Despite what you might hear in church, or view on Christian websites, the Bible isn’t all about those ten Godly commandments, loving your neighbour, doing onto others, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, truth,  justice and everlasting life. Star Wars aside, there’s a dark side to the Force. Even apart from hell, fire and brimstone and lots of sins and sinning, there’s much death and destruction all around. The Bible is full of tales of disasters that rival anything Mother Nature has conjured up. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

*Ten Disasters Rolled Into One: The Ten Plagues of Egypt (Exodus)

Despite there being no confirmation in ancient Egyptian historical records for these Biblical plagues, any of the first nine could have a natural explanation. I mean pestilences happen; ditto droughts/famine; locust swarms are hardly a novelty; even the Nile turning to blood can be seen to be just an ordinary toxic algae bloom – the ‘red tide’ common in other warm waters around the world, like the Gulf of Mexico.

The Tenth Plague however can not be attributed to a natural cause – death to all the Egyptian firstborn was literally a Deliberate Act of God; a deliberately calculated act of cold-blooded murder. Now, and most likely the case, it never happened and that’s supported by the fact that no such event is recorded in ancient Egyptian texts and it’s an event that can hardly have been unnoticed and been glossed over. If that’s so, then the related Passover celebration is a total fraud/fabrication. If on the other hand it happened as the Bible said it did, then God should be tried for crimes against humanity (specifically in this case crimes against the ancient Egyptian peoples), imprisoned for life with no hope of parole, since I assume He cannot be executed, though it would be justified, methinks.

*More Death by Drowning (Exodus)

To add insult to injury, I suppose one could also include the drowning of pharaoh’s army (Exodus) as a ‘natural’ disaster. There’s never an Ark around when you really need one! But gee whiz, gosh golly, guess what? Historians, and bookkeepers and accountants back in ancient Egypt somehow forgot to include the loss of all those chariots, horses and soldiers in their official inventories and recordkeeping. When you have that sort of appalling loss, scapegoats are found; heads roll. Alas, there’s also no record of any scapegoat or rolling heads over this unrecorded calamity. At least ancient Rome acknowledged that it lost their entire Ninth Legion, so something is screwy about Egyptian bookkeeping – or about the accounting in the Book of Exodus! 

*Your Numbers Are Up (Numbers)

If earthquakes and plagues (as in disease) are disasters, then the Book of Numbers is the place to find them (after Genesis and Exodus of course). There is dissention in the ranks of the Chosen People out there in the Sinai Wilderness and so there’s mutiny afoot and the Biblical equivalent of Captain Bligh (i.e. – God) will not be denied His wrath. The major mutiny ends with a bang and not a whimper. It ends when God kills thousands (14,700 – Numbers 16:49) of His Chosen People with a plague (love those germs) and a fiery earthquake (God’s hot to trot His shake, rattle and roll which kills another 250 - Numbers 16:32; 16:35 and 26:10) as punishment for rumblings in the ranks. Further on down the Wilderness track we have the episode of the ‘golden calf’ mark II (i.e. more idols; more idle worship). So God, knowing that His Chosen People didn’t build up sufficient immunity from His last bout of germ warfare, sends another – the local undertaker gets to bury another 24,000 Israelites (Numbers 25:9).

Turning now to the New Testament...

*The Ultimate Mother of All Disasters: Armageddon or the Apocalypse of Revelation

Here we are presented with destruction on a massive scale; the end of days; the end of the world; more hell, fire and brimstone (cubed) all around. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest (or Pestilence depending on interpretation), War, Famine and Death. This of course hasn’t happened yet (though it should have by roughly 100 CE according to Jesus), so it’s still in the ‘what if’ category, though actually I think that should read ‘iffy’ category. 

There are certainly potential natural scenarios that could easily mimic the Book of Revelation’s scenario, at least in terms of total firepower (or should that be Four Horsepower). Since this is near global destruction, we need something slightly bigger than a hurricane or an earthquake. All out nuclear or biological warfare might be a parallel, but then I’ve ruled out wars (and rumours of war) from the legit disaster category, though that might be little consolation if your city is nuked or if you’re infected deliberately with the bubonic plague. I’m thinking more along the lines here of an asteroid impact, as in the films “Armageddon” or “Deep Impact” (and a good dozen clones of these), though a good old nearby supernovae blast or gamma-ray burst would do the job nicely. Maybe there’s a Black Hole nearby which our solar system might be drifting towards. Gulp! In any event there’s a happy ending since out of the ashes the Phoenix (a new heaven and a new earth) will rise again.  

In conclusion, then as now, natural disasters inspire the creation of newer, better, bigger disasters: ten-fold the death count; twenty-fold the destruction. Of course this additional creation resides either in the land of pure fiction (browse your local DVD store and bookshop for examples), or at least as vastly embellished natural ones that actually happened, tales told well away from where they happened so no one’s the wiser. That F2 twister that passed several miles away from you now turns into an F5 that passed right overhead after several retellings!  

Since there is no supporting evidence for any of the Biblical disasters, I think it’s prudent to assign them to the category of, if not 100% fiction, then to the realm of greatly exaggerated campfire tall tales. As for Revelation, let’s just say that if it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to.

Those Tall Tales of Biblical Disasters: Part One

Despite what you might hear in church, or view on Christian websites, the Bible isn’t all about those ten Godly commandments, loving your neighbour, doing onto others, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, truth,  justice and everlasting life. Star Wars aside, there’s a dark side to the Force. Even apart from hell, fire and brimstone and lots of sins and sinning, there’s much death and destruction all around. The Bible is full of tales of disasters that rival anything Mother Nature has conjured up. 

We all tend to love a good disaster story. In films, we have “Atlantis, the Lost Continent”, “The Towering Inferno”; The Poseidon Adventure”; “Earthquake”; “Deep Impact”; “On the Beach”, “Swarm”, “Twister”, “When Worlds Collide”, etc. not to mention more alien invasion films than you can care to mention, far less remember. Surely films about nasty extraterrestrials are an order of magnitude greater than your fingers and toes put together, and when you toss in those nasties that Mother Nature can summon up, well it’s just pure gloom and doom all around. There’s no escape! 

It’s even better when a gloom and doom scenario is based on a real disaster – Pompeii (79), the San Francisco earthquake (1906); the floundering of RMS Titanic (1912), the Hindenburg crash (1937), the SS Andrea Doria sinking (1956), the Asian tsunami (2004), Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy (1974), the Black Plague, and literally thousands of other disasters, from plane crashes and train wrecks, to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, explosions; you name it – if it causes death and destruction it’s front-page and evening TV news.

Biblical disasters hold special pride of place (there’s even several documentary DVDs devoted to the theme) but first I’d better define what I mean by disaster. If an ant gets hit by a lump of hail, or even several humans wiped out in a car accident, well that’s a disaster for the ant or the humans, but not really a disaster in the larger context of what we think of as a real disaster (so Jonah and the ‘Whale’ isn’t a real disaster come survival against all the odds story). A bona-fide disaster has to inflict major damage and/or loss of life on a reasonably high percentage of the geographical area impacted upon. That ‘geographical area’ could of course be a ship or a plane carrying a relatively large numbers of passengers and crew down to their gloom and doom.  

Now there are disasters contained within the texts of the standard Bible. Some, especially the story of the flood (Genesis), have parallels in many other mythologies. Most are one-offs. I will make no absolute claims for the truth and accuracy, reality or non-reality, of these tall tales; apart from the observation that there are no non-Biblical bona-fide historical references or archaeological confirmations for the lot of them. Instead, they are just to be taken as  ‘riveting’ or as ‘captivating’ as much as the various real and imaginary disaster happenings part and parcel of our modern society that hold the attention of the reading and/or viewing audience.

*We Are Sailing on Noah’s Ark (Genesis)

Fortunately, Captain Noah doesn’t run into any icebergs on his maiden voyage. Disaster lurks elsewhere, and its Noah and crew who get to enact the great escape of all great escapes and survive. Survive what of course is that burst water main that floods everything for a rather long period of time, which is bad news for those 99.999% not on board with Noah as cork or foam-filled life jackets haven’t been invented yet. It is sink or swim time, and those without either life jackets or the timber deck of the Ark to stroll upon end up sinking.

If 99.999% of the world’s human (and non-human) population drowns because of this unprecedented and singular event (that 40 day and night global rainstorm and resulting flood), well that’s got to meet the dictionary definition of a disaster. There’s no evidence for it of course, and an event of this magnitude on a global scale isn’t physically possible in any event, but small-scale floods that can get embellished and blown out of all proportion in the telling and retellings, well that’s a different kettle of fish. But that’s hardly going to put a major dent in the human (and animal) population. Still, if you’re a fan of disaster flicks, this Biblical downpour (or water main burst) has appeal and will float your boat as it were, and no doubt it had appeal to disaster fans way back then. But all up, I suspect this was a minor event that got hyped up out of all proportion from its actual reality (if any). 

*Then there’s Sin City: Sodom & Gomorrah, the Las Vegas of the Era (Genesis)

Genesis 19: 24: Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown! This almost reads as if God was doing a preseason exhibition demonstration as a warm-up to Pompeii!

So what was the reason for this massive exercise in smiting? What exactly pissed the Almighty off? Apparently, among other wickedness, all sorts of unnatural acts (close encounters between the same sex) were enacted.

One question therefore immediately arises, if God was so against unnatural acts, how come He didn’t smite ancient Greece, ruled by those – shock, horror – ‘other gods’? That’s strike one alone. Homosexuality was socially acceptable in Greek society (strike two), not only between consulting adults but between adults and minors as well (strike three). Well maybe God was more than just a tad worried about being thrashed by Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades, and being outnumbered by the Olympians, thought discretion was the better part of valour. 

Maybe God should now smite down the United States and other Christian countries that have given equal rights to their gay communities. Well see that hasn’t happened (much to the disappointment of Christian Fundamentalists) which either tells you something about the reality of God or of God’s alleged wrath against unnatural acts – or maybe God’s too scared to take on the might of the USA, et al. least He get nuked in return.  

In any event, archaeologists and other ancient historians and Biblical scholars haven’t yet been able to turn the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah into a patch of physical real estate despite apparently knowing where to look (the Dead Sea region). Still, if a disaster via geological forces (i.e. – Pompeii) is your bag; Sodom & Gomorrah fits the fire and brimstone bill. If of course you get away from an Act of God to a Deliberate Act of God (as the Bible says it was), then there’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Japan) or Dresden (Germany) as parallels (though whether or not Acts of War qualify as disasters is another issue, but in that context I’ll rule out the Battle of Jericho as a Biblical disaster).       

To be continued…

God's Intelligent Design? Part One

One alleged proof of an Almighty deity is that life, the Universe and everything (LUE) is apparently designed in an intelligent, not in a random way. Part of that life is of course human beings, like you. Are you intelligently designed? If you answer “Yes”, I’ll say “Bull”! Is the rest of LUE intelligently designed to optimise your love and respect of your alleged Almighty Creator? If you answer “Yes” yet again, I’ll say “Bull yet again”!

Human beings are apparently the apex of all of that which God created. As such, all of that which God created should benefit or be beneficial to us. Life, the Universe and everything (LUE) has been designed by God with us in mind since LUE was created before us, in preparation for us. It (LUE) therefore must be an intelligently designed, since God is, presumably, intelligent (though creating the human species sort of makes you wonder). That intelligent design includes the design of God’s apex creation itself – the human being. Now, the question is, does the rhetoric meet the reality? Let’s start with the alleged intelligent design or construction of the human being.

Do you need a hearing aid? Do you need glasses? Did you require your tonsils or appendix or wisdom teeth to be removed? Do you suffer from haemorrhoids or back problems?  Have your hips, knees, and ankles let you down? Can your bones break? Do you suffer from baldness, tooth decay, arthritis, acne, colds, the flu, even cancer? Do you have issues with your sexuality or the functioning of your private parts? Do you suffer from mental illness? Who created the human species and therefore by definition created you? God, that’s who, created you! Who created your physiology and anatomy? Did I hear you say “God”? So who created all of your psychological, physiological and anatomical problems? Did I hear you say “God” again? Is this what you would consider Intelligent Design? I don’t think so! Did God fail Anatomy 101? I think so.

As an example of so-called ‘intelligent design’ our nakedness relative to our furry primate and hominid ancestors and current primate ‘relatives’ is another clue that God failed Anatomy 101 – there are multi-dozens upon dozens of primates; only one ‘naked ape’ (humans). Why did God create us without fur? I mean when the temperature drops much below the comfort threshold, we require in no uncertain terms clothing. When it hits freezing point, we can’t survive without clothing, yet our furry animal cousins seem to manage A-OK. There’s many an image of a furry mammal surviving, even thriving in the snow. Quite apart from the fact that fur is a better regulator of temperature than just sweating (our primary temperature regulation mechanism), loss of fur resulted in two other highly negative evolutionary rock and hard place restrictions.

We’ve been given (by God) a temperature regulation mechanism via sweating. Humans of all the mammals are the species that sweat the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. 1) We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of fresh water. 2) It also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare – so rare that once upon a time salt was extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It’s where we get our word, salary from. If only the Almighty had given us our fur.

Another screw-up by our Supreme Being has to do with our bipedal gait relative to the rest of the mammals. Can you name me one other mammal that routinely walks on two legs?  No? That’s probably because there are many negatives to a bipedal gait, like loss of stability. Humans are more prone to losing their balance and falling over than say a cow or a cat. If you’re alone and quadrupedal (or an insect or even better a spider) and lose the use of a leg, you’re hurting but not critically. If you’re alone and bipedal and lose the use of a leg, you’re up fertilizer creek. God should have given us six limbs – four legs and two arms! Now that would have been intelligent design.  

Further, as a benefit to God’s apex human species, it would have been really intelligent to cap off the aging process at say the 30 year mark. No wrinkles, no balding, no grey hairs, no liver spots, no need for a walking stick/cane, etc. Now we still have to eventually kick-the-bucket, but why have to suffer through the afflictions of old age? Be a 70-year-old in a 30-year-old body then have a sudden death heart attack that ends things on a still relatively youthful high note (as it were). I mean God created the animals that way – when’s the last time you saw an elderly grey-haired, wrinkled cat? How about a bald-headed dog? Animals don’t tend to show the aging process as obviously as us humans. Thanks God!

Quite apart from human beings, did God design an intelligently constructed universe? If God created humans, the be-all-and-end-all of His creations, then surely He would, as any parent would, design an environment that would protect us from harms way and certainly not put us in danger. Well, considering that many bits and pieces of God’s cosmic construction that could wipe out us human beings, I’d have to answer in the negative. God’s a bad parent. I mean there are gamma-ray bursts, supernovae explosions, black holes that can eat us as just a minor snack, solar flares and of course the now and again loose asteroid impact cannon that could just about make our day our last day. Who needs the Book of Revelation with all this potential cosmic end of days that’s so part and parcel of God’s Universe? 

Then you have oddballs like planets having days longer than their years and planets that rotate on their sides instead of having a rotation axis up-down. Maybe the Almighty has a warped sense of humour or likes variety!

But back to the dangers to human life and limb, how many of God’s so beloved subjects are wiped out by terrestrial, never mind extraterrestrial, “Acts of God” every year? How can I wipe ye out – let me count the ways. Floods are a given, even after Noah’s time; landslides and avalanches of course; drought and famine; wicked winds via hurricanes (cyclones or typhoons) and of course tornadoes; wildfires; tsunamis; earthquakes; volcanoes; and God’s favourite, bolts of lightning from the sky*, and a host of other natural ways and means of translating the you that is you into the late you that was you. Why does God enact “Acts of God” when God created you and loves you, and is merciful and compassionate? Something’s screwy somewhere!

Speaking of screwy, I tend to find it pretty incredible that people who survive an “Act of God” (i.e. – a natural disaster) attribute their good fortune to a miracle (as in “it’s a miracle we survived”), as in a supernatural intervention when it was just the luck of the draw. And then to top it off, they will “Thank God” for having survived. Do you “Thank God” for an “Act of God”? I think not. How about giving God the Big Finger for sending the “Act of God” your way in the first damn place! 

If God created everything, God created the laws of physics. That includes the laws that govern nuclear fission and fusion. Nuclear fusion and fission can create items that go ‘Ka-Boom’. An atomic or nuclear explosion in your neck of the woods can also ruin your day! Even a peaceful nuclear power plant meltdown can be detrimental to your health. So much for God’s design of intelligent physics! Now of course our Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, but an intelligent all-powerful God I’m sure could have created an alternative form of solar energy.

But here again maybe God’s sense of funny-bone humour comes into play. If God created physics then He created quantum physics and no doubt God is rolling on Heaven’s floor laughing his posterior off at the inability of His subjects to come to terms with the associated absurdities that He mandated regarding all things quantum. Einstein said that God does not throw dice. Einstein shouldn’t tell God what to do. God not only throws dice, He throws them where you can’t even see them.

If God created everything, God also created the laws of chemistry. That includes various mixtures which, albeit on a lesser scale, can also go ‘Ka-Boom’, like gunpowder. How many of God’s human subjects, get to join God in Heaven somewhat prematurely as a result of the use and misuse of gunpowder or dynamite or nitro-glycerine? An intelligent God might have bypassed the design and need of chemical explosives.

As an analogy, does a rational parent give their ten-year-old child a loaded gun to ‘play’ with? 

To be continued…

*Oops – sorry, I meant Zeus. I have lots of trouble telling the two apart since they both look so much alike!